Sunday, June 1, 2008

Tooth & Nail

Everyone, I think, wants to do some good for the world. While my job generally takes me the opposite way, I’ve found satisfaction as a humanitarian here, by reviewing bad movies so you won’t make the mistake of watching them. With this in mind, if you were planning to buy or rent Tooth and Nail, please send me half of what you’re going to spend. I earned the money with this turkey.

The movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic milieu. Apparently in 2012, the world ran out of gas. Literally. Rather than gradual diminishing supplies and rising prices, this happened suddenly, so fast that cars were left stranded on the motorways. There was no alternative power because, as explained in an annoying voice-over, “People asked what about coal? You have to have gas to transport coal. Nuclear power.” This is priceless, since it gives a goofy explanation why coal can’t be used, and the explanation of why nuclear power wasn’t used is “Nuclear power.” If I were more Zen I would understand that. Anyway, loss of gasoline leads to world-wide conflict, and two-thirds of the world’s population dies. Most of the survivors move South, ignoring that population density was low as you approached the equator in pre-industrial times, and the Eastern seaboard, which was the most heavily populated portion of the country before and after cars, is practically depopulated.

In Philadelphia, the setting for this epic, the population has been reduced improbably to eight survivors, living in a hospital. They are worried about starvation, since their foraging skills seem limited, they haven’t planted any food despite being there for at least a year, and no one can fish. Of the eight stalwarts, there are two who serve a purpose. Darwin makes speeches about rebuilding the world (he doesn’t do anything but talk about it) and Viper can fight with his handy bow n’ arrow. Everyone else just mopes their day away. Oh, and everyone is named after a car except Darwin. Viper, Torino, Neon, Ford, etc. I guess the writer was aiming for irony, but fell short and landed in stupidity.

The group’s peaceful moping is interrupted by the arrival of the Rovers, a nomadic group dedicated to reviving the traditional cowboy song, singing classics like Water and Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds. Let me check my notes. Scratch that. The Rovers are actually a group of cannibals who dress like Vikings, who stalk mopers, picking them off one by one and eating them. The Rovers all have animal names, although at this point, I thought it would be cool if they were all named after Ford models and the mopers named after GM cars, which would have extended the original metaphor. Included among the Rovers are Michael Madsen, whose agent must hate him like cancer, and Juggernaut from the X-men, who probably doesn’t have an agent.

Soon the mopers realize their numbers are in decline, and they are under siege by the Rovers. It doesn’t help them that they have guns, while the Rovers use axes and spears. “There’s too many to fight with guns,” it is explained. Excuse me, I saw Zulu. Afficionados of edged weapons usually take a lot of casualties against carbines. Too many, by the way, is fourteen. The mopers are so demoralized that, when the Rovers line up in the parking lot so the mopers can see them, the moper with the rifle doesn’t even bother to pick any off. Faced with becoming an entrée, the mopers also don’t bother to fortify their position, or try to create booby-traps or anything. They just hole up until nightfall, when they require to their individual quarters, even though they know the Rovers are getting them one at a time, at night.

Eventually, we have the final confrontation and the movie ends. You may be fooled into reading this and thinking “at least it’s action-packed.” It isn’t. The bulk of the movie is the mopers sitting around, talking about how awful everything is, though they never feel compelled to doing anything. Even in the rare scenes of carnage, the Rovers just seem to go through listless motions. If you’re going to be a murderous cannibal, at least find some joy in your work. The movie-makers also shot a lot of second unit footage of buildings and sky and so on, and we get to look at a lot of that.